Now that your vision for
many of the key aspects of your business is coming clear, it is time to develop
your firms approach and key processes to ensure it will it hit mark with its
first offering, continue to deliver significant and growing value moving
forward, and remain the supplier of choice in a highly-competitive world. As
soon as you become successful, others will notice you. The greater your success
the more others will choose to compete in an effort to claim a piece of this
growing opportunity. If your vision is to lead, how will you use the tools at
your disposal to remain a market leader? If your vision is to follow, how will
you ensure that there are distinctive benefits that warrant customers selecting
your firm’s offerings over those of the market leader?
This deliverable
requires you to find a relevant marketing plan template and use it to create
this plan. Many good sources do not require you to create an account or pay
money to see and benefit from their insights. Similarly, many marketing plan
templates suggest that you need to provide all of the elements of a business
plan. Clearly, business plan information is critical, but you only need to
focus on the marketing aspect for this deliverable; you already have produced
many of the key elements of a business plan in the prior deliverables, so do
not duplicate it here.
a. How will your firm go about establishing actionable insights and
developing a deep understanding of the needs of those who could benefit from
what your firm will produce? How will your firm appreciate the changes the end
customer and/or their firm must implement in order to truly benefit from your
firm’s offerings? How will your firm understand the trends that might influence
the concepts that drive the whole product that should be produced and help your
firm prioritize work on the whole product, resolving issues with element of
current products, and prepare for and work on future product?
b. What is the right mix of communication, advertising, promotion,
and information gathering goals, methods, and processes, and how might they
change as your firm goes from startup to a single product firm with no legacy
products or services, to a more mature firm with an array of products and
services at various stages in their life cycle? Does it make sense to provide
self-assessment and performance improvement support materials as part of the
advertising and promotional support in order to help improve the probability
that the ultimate consumers will be successful using the products and services
and realize the envisioned benefits? Are there cases where aspects of
self-assessment, education, training, and practice support should be thought of
as communication, advertising, and promotion as opposed to salable products and
services?
c. Are there likely to be changes in the nature of the relationship
between the firm and its customers as the business matures? If so, what might
these changes be, why will they develop, and how should the firm prepare for
them, should the firm be proactive to help shape these changes? If not, what is
it about your product or service that makes you believe that the needs and
requirements of more knowledgeable and sophisticated customers are the similar
to those of first time buyers? Is such proactive manipulation of customers
ethical?
Consider these questions
and how you would answer them in the context of a market plan designed to
convince your reader that the investment in realizing this marketing plan is a
crucial aspect of making your firm successful.